The Dream of the Iron Dragon

by Robert Kroese

  Mallick looked to Carpenter, who nodded. She was right, of course.

  Another pause of just under eight hours followed. Then the signal was broadcast three more times, with gaps of two hours and thirty-eight minutes between. This cycle continued for the remainder of Andrea Luhman’s journey toward the planet. Fifteen days later, it coasted into a high orbit. They’d pinpointed the location of the signal to within ten meters.

  The planet was—to put it mildly—a disappointment. If it weren’t for the mysterious signal, Mallick would never have given it a second look. The planet was small, pulling about point six gees. Its surface seemed to be made up of volcanic rock and ash—mostly silicon, iron and magnesium. A meteorological probe indicated a thin atmosphere of methane, ammonia and a few other trace gases. The surface temperature averaged a brisk negative-thirty-degrees Celsius. Hardly a candidate for the last refuge of humanity. There was no sign of any large structures or activity on the surface, and Mallick began to wonder if the Fibonacci broadcast hadn’t been triggered by some automated process left in place years or even decades earlier.

  Still, at some point someone—human, Cho-ta’an or other—had been here, and that was worth looking into.

  *****

  The landing craft descended orthogonally to the planet’s surface, the thin atmosphere providing minimal resistance. The lander used liquid hydrogen for fuel, and the planet’s atmosphere had enough water that if necessary it could refuel by pulling the water out of the air and separating it into hydrogen and oxygen using its proton reactor as an energy source. This probably wouldn’t be necessary: the planet’s gravity was a just over half of Earth’s, so the lander’s engines spent little fuel on the landing. It landed on a smooth volcanic plain about two hundred meters from the transmitter, which was a nondescript metal tower some twenty meters high. While Carpenter tracked them from above, the four expeditionary team members donned their EVA suits and exited the vehicle.

  “Where to, Captain?” asked Reyes, over the suit’s radio.

  Mallick pointed to the transmitter. “Might as well start there.” He took a few slow steps toward the tower, taking his time to acclimate to the suit, the rocky landscape and the reduced gravity. Reyes followed him. Stauffer and Slater brought up the rear, moving in long, slow bounds.

  “What do you think, Reyes?” the captain asked, as they stood looking up to the tower.

  “Looks like Cho-ta’an construction,” Reyes said. “Aluminum, like most of their structures. And they use these funny clamps instead of screws. That’s a directional antenna on top. Definitely the source of the signal. The second signal, that is. Tower hasn’t been here long. Hard to say what this atmosphere would do to aluminum, but I’d expect more corrosion if it had been here for more than a few years.”

  “So, relatively recent Cho-ta’an construction. Anything else?”

  Reyes shrugged, but the gesture was all but lost in her bulky suit. “Nothing I can see.”

  Stauffer, towering over the diminutive Reyes, concurred with her conjecture. None of the others had anything to add.

  “Well,” said the captain, “we didn’t come all this way to stare at a damn radio tower. Unless they’re screwing with us, whoever sent that signal has to be around here somewhere.”

  “Captain,” said Slater, “look.”

  Mallick turned toward Slater and saw that she was pointing at the ground. The terrain was mostly volcanic rock, but there were patches where powdery dust had settled. Slater was pointing at one of these. It had a boot print in it.

  “Cho-ta’an?” the captain asked.

  “Affirmative,” said Slater. “Or a very big human, with unusually elongated feet. She took a few steps away from the tower. Here’s another. They lead this way.”

  “Seems almost too easy,” said Reyes.

  “Tell me about it,” said the captain. “But we’re committed now. If we’re walking into a trap, we might as well get it over with. Come on.” He walked past Slater, taking the lead.

  *****

  The trail ended after about a hundred meters at a horizontal hatch almost two meters in diameter, made of a dull gray metal with a bluish-green tint. Barely perceptible on the surface were lines that spiraled out from the center, marking an iris-like opening. The hatch was raised several centimeters above ground level, giving the impression they were looking at the top of a cylinder, the rest of which was buried in the rock. There was no visible latch or any sort of control panel. Mallick did the only sensible thing he could do: he knocked.

  First he tried stomping on the hatch with his boot, but between the rubbery surface of the boot and the weak gravity, he doubted he was making enough noise for anyone inside to hear. He tried with the butt of his fist as well, but that didn’t work any better. Finally Reyes handed him a rock about the size of a softball. He made three tentative taps on the hatch and then stepped back. The others had felt the vibrations through their feet. If anyone was inside, they must have heard it.

  After several seconds, the hatch silently spiraled open. The expedition team members stood in tense stillness for a moment, as if waiting for some alien beast to spring out and devour them.

  “I guess they know we’re here,” said Slater, stating the obvious.

  Mallick took a step forward and looked down. When he suffered no ill effects, the others stepped forward as well.

  The hatch had opened to reveal a vertical shaft about fifteen meters deep. The shaft appeared to be a perfect cylinder, with walls constructed of the same bluish-gray metal. A series of metal rungs led to the bottom, where a roughly human-sized opening led to another tunnel or an underground chamber; it was impossible to say which. The illumination seemed to be coming from a series of palm-sized white discs that lined the shaft in a spiral pattern, spaced about half a meter apart.

  “You getting this, Carpenter?” the captain asked. Their suits were all equipped with cameras, and the video feed was being transmitted to the lander and then relayed to Andrea Luhman.

  “Aye, sir,” said Carpenter over the radio. “What is it?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out,” Mallick said.

  “You’re going in?” Carpenter asked.

  “I don’t see we have much choice. In for a penny and all that. We may lose you down there, though.”

  “If you leave one man on the surface, their suit will act like a repeater,” Carpenter’s voice said. “The suits’ transmitters are designed to provide redundancy.”

  “Copy that,” Mallick said. “Something tells me nothing’s getting through that hatch, though. If that thing closes after us….”

  “You might be cut off completely, yeah.”

  “And possibly trapped,” said the captain. “All right, Slater. You stay up here. You’re our link to the lander.”

  “Seriously?” Slater said. “You wake me up from stasis to make contact with an alien civilization and I end up being a human antenna?”

  “On the plus side,” the captain said, “if this is all an elaborate trap, you’ve got much better odds than the rest of us. You get low on oxygen, you jump back in the lander and head back to Andrea Luhman. We need somebody to fly the lander back anyway.”

  They could read Slater’s body language even through her suit.

  “Look, Slater,” Mallick said. “I get it. This isn’t what you’d envisioned when you signed up for this mission. But we don’t know what’s down there. Somebody’s got to stay topside, and other than me you’re the only one certified on the lander.”

  “I understand, Captain. I’m not arguing with you. Just… disappointed. Anyway, get going. I’ll be up here waiting.”

  “Try to maintain line-of-sight to us as long as you can,” Mallick said.

  “Got it, Captain. Go.”

  The captain nodded and turned back to the shaft. “I’ll go first. Stauffer, you’re next. Reyes, you bring up the rear. Take your time and don’t crowd each other. As far as I’m concerned, the biggest danger is still the enviro
nment. A tear in an EVA suit and this whole expedition is over before we even know what we’re here for. Wait for me to give you the go-ahead before you come down.”

  “Aye, Captain,” the others said together.

  “Okay, let’s do this,” Mallick said. “For the record, this is Captain Nathan Mallick of the IDL exploratory ship Andrea Luhman, transmitting from the surface of this beautiful ball of rock, where the temperature outside is a balmy negative twenty-one degrees Celsius. We’re about a hundred meters from the transmitter tower, looking down a metal shaft about fifteen meters deep. A hatch has opened, apparently in response to me banging on it with a rock. At this point we don’t know who built this thing, what’s down there, or who opened the hatch. This could very well be my last transmission.” He paused a moment to look at the others. “Did I miss anything?”

  “I think that pretty much covers it, Captain,” Stauffer said.

  “Great,” said Mallick with forced enthusiasm. “Here I go.”

  Mallick lowered himself into the shaft, continuing to narrate his way as his feet hit one of the rungs and he began to climb slowly down. It took him nearly three minutes to reach the bottom. He gingerly set one boot and then the other on the metal floor. Turning around, he saw a man-sized arched doorway leading into a square room about five meters in diameter. In the far wall was a heavy-duty metal door, also man-sized. A small window at eye height revealed nothing beyond but darkness.

  “What do you see, Captain?” Reyes said, causing Mallick to realize he’d ceased his play-by-play.

  “Room about five meters square, with walls of the same metal. Door in the far wall. Looks like it could be an airlock. I’m guessing this is some kind of foyer or entry room. There’s something strange, though. Rather, there’s something unusually ordinary.”

  “Sir?” said Reyes.

  “Stauffer, how tall is the average Cho-ta’an?”

  “Two point two meters, sir. The tallest specimen we’ve recovered was almost two and a half meters, if I’m remembering correctly.”

  Mallick nodded, trying to imagine one of the tall, lanky Cho-ta’an standing where he stood. He reached up and touched the top of the arched doorway with his fingertips. “I don’t think we’re dealing with Cho-ta’an,” he said. “The doors are too short. This place was built by humans, or somebody about the size of humans.”

  “I’d still wager it’s Cho-ta’an who sent that signal,” Stauffer said. “But maybe somebody else built this structure.”

  “Point taken,” Mallick said. “I’m heading into the foyer.” He ducked as he walked through the archway to keep his helmet from brushing against the metal. Whoever built this place, it wasn’t Cho-ta’an. But humans had never been to this part of space, as far as anyone at IDL knew—and these doorways were too low even for a tall human in an EVA suit. So… some other race entirely? Or some rogue human element? Probably the damn Chinese, Mallick thought, and couldn’t help chuckling. It would be just like the Chinese to build a secret facility with doorways too low for most people in the IDL. He kept this thought to himself. Since the rebellions in their mining colonies in 2219, the Chinese had been too preoccupied to worry about deep space exploration, and these days they were nominally allied with the IDL against the Cho-ta’an menace.

  “The room is illuminated by overhead panels,” he said, looking up at the ceiling, which was less than a meter from the top of his helmet. “Circular. Same as in the shaft, but bigger. Door in the opposite wall is definitely an airlock. There’s a window in it, but it’s either very dark on the other side or the window has been obscured. There’s a control panel. Again, it seems to be at a height that would be more suitable for humans than Cho-ta’an.” He approached the panel, which was a metal disc that extruded about two centimeters from the wall. Several circular buttons of various colors were arranged in a spiral pattern. Each button had a symbol or set of symbols etched into it. The symbols, composed of interlocking swoops and zigzags, were no language Mallick had ever seen.

  “Can you see this, Stauffer?” Mallick asked.

  “Yeah, I’ve got your video feed on my heads-up,” Stauffer said. “Hard to make it out, but those characters don’t look like Cho-ta’an iconography. And that spiral pattern, that’s just weird.”

  “That’s your professional opinion? It’s ‘weird?’ Could it be a Fractalist thing?”

  “Could be,” said Stauffer. “But frankly I’ve never seen anything like it. Maybe if I could get a first-hand look….”

  “I hear you,” said Mallick. “Okay, come on down. No obvious threats down here, and I seem to be at an impasse.”

  “Roger, Captain,” said Stauffer.

  “Remember,” said Mallick, “take it slow.”

  Stauffer made his way down the ladder. Mallick waited as he lowered himself to the metal floor and then joined him in the small entry room. Stauffer, who was a good five centimeters taller than Mallick, had to bend to get through the archway. The captain moved aside so he could get a look at the control panel.

  “Definitely not Cho-ta’an design,” said Stauffer. “None of this is. But….”

  “It doesn’t look human either,” said Mallick. “Yeah, I thought the same thing. Okay, Reyes, come on down.”

  A few minutes later Reyes joined them. She at least had no trouble getting through the doorway. The two men moved aside to let her take a look at the panel.

  “Any ideas?” Mallick asked.

  “Not really,” Reyes said, moving about to look at the extruded disc from all angles. “It’s not like any control panel I’ve seen. These symbols… too abstract to interpret. And the colors could mean anything. I’d just be pressing buttons at random. My suggestion? Stick with what worked before.”

  Mallick nodded. “Slater, can you read me?”

  Slater’s voice came over his helmet speakers, distorted but audible. “Aye, Captain. You’re breaking up a little, but I can still hear you.”

  “All right,” said Mallick. “I’m going to try knocking on the airlock door.”

  “Copy that,” Slater said.

  Mallick turned to face the other two. “Ready?”

  The other two nodded. Mallick pounded three times on the window with his gloved fist.

  For a couple of minutes, nothing seemed to happen. Mallick put his palm on the window and debated knocking again.

  “They have to know we’re here,” Stauffer said. “If they heard you banging on the hatch outside. I don’t see any cameras, but—”

  “Shh!” Mallick hissed. “Did you hear that?”

  Neither of them answered. Had he imagined it? A sound like a click of metal? It occurred to him that the atmosphere was too thin to transmit sound waves. So if he really had heard something, it was either over the suit’s speakers or….

  He felt his chest tighten. “Slater, do you copy?”

  No answer.

  “Slater, this is the captain. Respond if you read me.”

  Still no answer.

  “Where’d she go?” Stauffer asked.

  “Nowhere,” Mallick replied after a moment. “I think the hatch closed.” He’d heard it only because his hand was on the airlock door. The sound had been transmitted through his glove. “Look alive, people. I think our hosts are—”

  Just then, the door slid open, revealing another small room. It was round, with walls of the same bluish metal. An identical door was in the far wall.

  “Airlock,” Reyes said. “We’re being invited in.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Mallick said. “We don’t seem to have much choice in the matter. Come on.” He stepped into the airlock and the other two followed. Once they were all inside, the door slid shut. A moment later, they heard a faint humming noise.

  They spent the next two minutes watching the atmospheric readouts on their suits. When the humming ceased, Mallick’s display indicated twenty-one percent oxygen, seventy-eight percent nitrogen and just under one percent carbon dioxide, with a pressure of one point one atmos
pheres. The temperature was eighteen point four degrees Celsius.

  “A little high on the CO2,” Reyes said, “but it should be breathable.”

  “Helmets stay on for now,” Mallick said. “We don’t know what kind of pathogens are in this air.”

  “Copy that,” said Reyes.

  “One thing is clear,” Stauffer said. “We’re definitely dealing with Cho-ta’an. These readings match what we’ve found on the Cho-ta’an ships we’ve salvaged. Whoever built this place, the Cho-ta’an have it now.”

  He had barely finished speaking when a voice somewhere overhead said, “Please remove your suits and leave them on the floor. You will not need them. The air is safe to breathe.” The voice didn’t sound quite human—it had the low, raspy intonation of a Cho-ta’an—but it spoke with no discernable accent.

  Stauffer and Reyes looked to Mallick. After a moment, Mallick unlatched his helmet. There was a hiss of air as the pressure equalized, and then he removed the helmet. He took a deep breath and exhaled.

  The others hesitated, watching the captain as if expecting him to turn green and fall to the floor.

  “We’re going to have to trust these people,” said Mallick. “If they wanted us dead, we’d already be so.”

  Reyes nodded and unlatched her helmet. Stauffer did the same. He breathed deeply through his nostrils.

  “Strange smell,” he said. “Metallic.”

  “Maybe this is what the Cho-ta’an homeworld smells like,” Mallick said. “Anyway, a weird smell isn’t going to kill you. Just try to breathe naturally. If you start hyperventilating, the CO2 could be a problem.”

  As soon as they had removed the bulky EVA suits, the door on the other side of the airlock slid open to reveal another room, not much larger than the airlock. It too had no windows and only a single door in the far wall. Mallick walked into the room, followed by Reyes and Stauffer. When they were all inside, the door they had come through slid shut.